Awe & Wonder On the train a few months back, I happened to look out the window opposite where I was sitting. Outside was lowland marsh, with scrubby grasses broken up by pools of water. In the distance, clouds had gathered in front of the upper reaches of the mountains. The clouds were blocking the sun, with varying degrees of translucency, so that the light in some places was a bright un-occluded white, and in others, a dim, hazy, yellow. When the sunlight gained any strength through the clouds, there was terrible beauty. The pools of water punctuating the marsh, ranging in size from puddles to small lakes, were completely still; their surfaces mirrors. They perfectly reflected the partially cloudy sky above, and I witnessed this continuous perfection as the train went on for several miles. It was so perfect as to look like a CGI effect, but not in the mechanistic way that CGI effects look. Everything about the scene said Reality and Truth. Its effect on me was like running full speed into a wall, without the pain. My gut was full of butterflies, my soul fully awake. The reflection was a perfect simulacrum. I have never seen anything like it. I was overwhelmed, but too timid to call out to those riding the train with me. I wanted to shout, “come and see this! Hurry, it could end at any second!”. To say that “I wanted to shout”, trivializes the feeling. A closer description would be that it was like my soul was trying to wrench its way out of my mouth. But I gave in to propriety, told my soul that we didn’t want to look foolish now, did we, and said nothing.

As I was walking down the sidewalk to the light rail after getting off the train, I wondered, what is the evolutionary purpose of this episode’s effect on me? Was its purpose to give humans an emotional boost, to work against the harshness of life? Was it so overwhelming to me now, because I am comfortable, and therefore affected disproportionately by this experience? Or was it disproportionate? Would it have been exactly the same for a human 10,000 years ago? Would this beauty then have been commonplace? And why the deep, spiritual feeling that accompanied the experience? Is that part of the evolutionary purpose? Is there such a thing as “evolutionary purpose”? How could it be possible that the evolutionary process could “sense” a need for such an experience? Does it know about suicides or giving up from despair? These would be the only reasons I can think of for which evolution would require this experience.

But, of course, according to the leading thinkers in evolutionary theory, at least as far as I understand them, there is no “reason” behind evolution, it is just something that happens. What I experienced would be a result of evolution, but not a purpose of it. These sorts of experiences could only be characterized as accidents, or byproducts of a sufficiently sophisticated brain. This may be true, but it doesn’t resonate that way in me. Stupid sufficiently sophisticated brain, with its byproduct metaphysical and spiritual misfirings! Suffice it to say, I am skeptical of the “accidentally wired for God” argument.

On a more prosaic note, I wonder why this affected me so much more than most moments I’ve had interacting with other people. It is probably because this experience invoked wonder at a very atavistic level and invoked a scale of time not possible to invoke with another person. There was no “me”, save as a vessel of awe. Then again, there was the entire of “me”, but shot through with eternity, or at least a time so vast that it makes no matter. The wonder was fleeting, but the sense of perfection in the world endures.  ¶ 23:22